Palermo/Catania
Published in Kitchen stories
This week I was busy working in Catania, what a wonderful city! So phisical sensual, black and dense of humours... I love Catania and it is realy like beeing in another world from Palermo. where you can still have glimpes of the big, fashonable, aristocratic city of the 1940.
Catania is much more dense, rustic and slighlty provincial but so rich in flavours, rumors and sex apeal!
The same happens to the food, I had a lovely spaghetti con i masculiddi (which are baby anchovies very popular in Catania's market). It is a cataneese version of pasta con le sarde. no wild fennel and masculiddi instead of the sardines.
Not as rich as pasta con le sarde but very delicate.
A bunch of miles between the two cities and you enter in two different worlds, and HUGE differences!
The bread for Sain Joseph's feast
Published in Kitchen stories
In Sicily, religious feasts celebrate an abundance, even an excess, of things to eat. They compensate, symbolically, for the precariousness of a way of life that—until a few decades ago—bordered on starvation and misery. This excess seems to be characteristic of the poorest of archaic societies, where it was common to “waste” much of what was prepared for a feast. In these ritual banquets, food was offered in hopes of a blessing. Such religious festivals are always celebrated with a banquet in Sicily. The food offered at a feast is never just food but is also a rite that encompasses various histories and traditions. In towns in the interior of Sicily, the feast of San Giuseppe on March 19 is celebrated at home with altars offering a banquet. Called Altars of San Giuseppe, these are huge tables piled high with food that strive to impress the villagers who have been invited to view them. These altars are mounted to accompany a religious vow made to San Giuseppe and the food displayed on the altar is meant for the actors in this rite, three poor children from the town who represent Joseph, Mary and Jesus, and for all those others who wish to participate. Women are the protagonists in this feast: they prepare the food, they bake the bread, they direct the sacred rite. The feast of San Giuseppe, like many other feasts in Sicily, is an occasion on which daughters-in-law, sisters, aunts, cousins, etc. come together and work together, and so consolidate the family unit. The altar and the ritual feast consumed by the three saints on March 19 is merely the denouement of a ceremony that lasts at least 10 days.
This is a ceremony managed exclusively by the women of the house, who prepare an enormous quantity of food and put it on display. The fifth and sixth day is devoted to baking bread, the central element in the feast and in Sicilian diet in general. Sicily has always been a land devoted to agriculture, and all the peoples who have inhabited it, whether religious or not, have celebrated wheat as part of their culture with myths linked to agricultural cycles. Pagan customs, popular beliefs and religious rites still come together today in celebrations involving food and the baking of bread, symbols of faith and also of the feminine power to recreate the world in various kinds of bread. Bread-making begins at dawn in the countryside, where nearly everyone has a wood oven. The bakers must rise early because bread-making requires a warm house, so the oven is stoked to raise the temperature and allow the bread to rise. In Mirabella Imbaccari, not far from Caltagirone, large loaves of bread called cuddure are prepared for the saints and smaller loaves, called panuzzi, are baked to be distributed to those who come to admire the altar. The bread is handled with all the care and love afforded to a newborn baby. The dough is mixed quickly and rhythmically with strong arms by all the women of the family. The three shapes that depict the Holy Family in Mirabella are the beard of San Giuseppe, the Virgin with her hands crossed on her breast, and the rooster, who represents Jesus.
Almost all the shapes into which the bread is modelled are traditional ones made without forms and using only a few utensils (such as forks and pincers), and they may take animal, plant, floral or geomteric shapes. Many of these shapes are very ancient, dating back to agrarian cults of the Neolithic period. They are found in many other parts of Sicily. Elsewhere the bread shapes may represent the saint’s tools (such as the saw, pincers or hammer), parts of his body, such as the hand or beard, symbols of the passion of Christ (a spear, nails, a stick with a sponge, a ladder), or depictions of symbolic fruits or animals (grapes, the cock, fish). At Ramacca, the symbolic shapes include a flowered branch, a braid and a beard, as well as large cuddure with floral patterns. On these forms grow flowers, sprigs of wheat and fruits, symbols of the natural world in all its abundance. When the bread has risen it is brushed with egg and baked. The period of baking is experienced as a rite of waiting, patience and reflection. When finally the great, golden cuddure, weighing 7-8 kilos each, are baked, they are ready to go on the altar.
Video
S. Lucia
Published in Kitchen storiesLegend has it that once upon a time a tremendous famine came to Siracusa, and the people were so hungry they had lost all hope they would survive. Then one day-- it was the 13th of December--a miracle happened. A mysterious ship appeared, from far away, loaded with wheat. Starving and grateful, the people of Siracusa threw themselves on the grain and taking it to their homes, cooked it just as it was, without grinding it into flour first. It was Lucia’s Day, the feast of the martyred saint of Siracusa, December 13. From that day forward the saint that saved the Sicilians from hunger has been celebrated across the island on her feast day by serving, not bread or pasta, but only la cuccia, a dish of wheat berries boiled and seasoned in various ways around the region. La cuccia is eaten all over Sicily on Santa Lucia. My grandfather liked it simply boiled and seasoned with a dash of oil and some salt, and I believe this was the traditional way to eat it. Today, as our palates tend more to the sweet, la cuccia is often prepared as a dessert, mixing the wheat berries with ricotta and candied fruit, or with honey, blancmange, or vino cotto. When I began to research my documentary on Santa Lucia, I discovered, much to my surprise, that Siracusa, where Santa Lucia is the patron saint, had completely lost the tradition of making la cuccia. That tradition was recovered a few years ago by the pasticceria Artale, near the Duomo of Siracusa, where they make the dish on December 13 and hand it out to all the townsfolk. Devotion to Santa Lucia is very heartfelt in Castelbuono, an ancient, beautiful town at the base of the Madonie mountains. Here the feast of Santa Lucia is actually celebrated twice a year, in September and in December, both times by serving la cuccia. Many today still like the traditional method of preparation, the one my grandfather preferred and which the poor and the farm hands on our lands ate. Here in Castelbuono a handful of chick peas is added to the grain. For those with bigger appetites, la cuccia is also prepared at Castelbuono with blancmange, a milk pudding that dates from the Middle Ages, flavored with lemon peel, cinnamon and shavings of chocolate. In Palermo, the devout not only eat no bread or pasta on December 13, they do not use any flour at all in their cooking. But don’t think they perish from hunger—anything but. A traditional dish for Santa Lucia is the arancina, a large ball of rice, stuffed and fried. In honor of Lucia, these are even sometimes stuffed with chocolate according to a custom that probably goes back to Baroque cooking, when it was fashionable to mix sweet and savory. Another Palermo specialty are sweet panelle: these are very different from the savory panelle made with chickpea flour. Sweet panelle are a kind of half-moon pastry filled with cream. Nobody makes them at home; they’re found only in some pasticcerie. As you can see, devotion to Santa Lucia does not mean having to go hungry! Lucia’s name comes from luce, light. And so she is also the protector of vision and of the eyes. For this reason, especially in eastern Sicily, a bread in the shape of eyes or eyeglasses—called “uocci di Santa Lucia” was traditional. It’s a custom that is disappearing, unfortunately, but I discovered something similar in the charming town of Modica, an industious little city that is particularly rich in culinary heritage. Here, halfway between Modica alta, up on the hill, and Modica bassa, down in the valley, a group of devotées of Santa Lucia meet each year to make cucciddati, small, thin leaves of unleavened bread. Made of water, flour and salt only, these are baked in the oven and then taken to the Church of Santa Lucia to be blessed. They are then pressed on the eyelids in the hope the saint will provide protection. The Garofano bakery of Siracusa has resumed this tradition, making an excellent bread for December 13, with just flour and water and a trace of yeast to give it the right consistency. The bread is taken to the church and blessed before being distributed to all. In my travels around Sicily I’ve had the impression that the eastern end of the island is less rich in culinary heritage, perhaps because economic and political power has long been concentrated in Palermo, the capital. Be that as it may, the nicest celebration of Santa Lucia in all of Sicily takes place in Belpasso at the foot of Mt. Etna, on the island’s eastern side. It’s a great celebration of lights, color and sound, without, however, any special local foods. On December 13 in Belpasso, the stands in the market sell torrone, nuts and candies, things we never eat at our food fairs, along with crespelle, little pancakes typical of eastern Sicily, made with a very liquid batter that demands speed and dexterity to handle. They are filled with ricotta or anchovies and then fried in hot oil. On the night of Santa Lucia, the whole town turns out for a procession with floats. Four or five tractors pulling flatbed trucks have been decorated with huge, mobile stage sets which are manipulated, to music and singing and psychedelic lights, during the course of the evening, so that they open like a kalaidoscope to create various scenes. Scenes that illustrate episodes from the Bible and stories from the life of Lucia. This virtuoso display of images is a living vestige of the masterful Baroque sets built for parties and banquets in 18th century Europe.